The boy in the picture is...me!

He happened to notice a photograph on the wall showing a distinguished looking man greeting a smartly-dressed young lad.

"I said to his wife, 'do you know who that little boy is?'" said Mr Elsegood. "She said, 'I would love to know'.

"I said: 'It's me'."

The picture showed David Thompson's father William during his term as Lord Mayor of York in 1943. Mr Elsegood was one of a party of Blue Coat School children who met the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House.

That event took place towards the end of the school's life. Next year marks the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Blue Coat School.

From 1705 until its closure in 1947 it offered an education to disadvantaged and orphaned children.

Both Mr Elsegood and Alderman Thompson were pupils at the Blue Coat School, based in St Anthony's Hall, Peasholme Green, now home to the Borthwick Institute.

Mr Thompson came to York as an orphan when he was seven. He left the Blue Coat School at 14, when he was apprenticed to the grocery trade.

He went on to become a successful businessman and a progressive farmer, but he always retained an active interest in the Blue Coat School.

When he became Lord Mayor, he made sure he organised a reception for pupils.

The timing coincided with Mr Elsegood's stint at the school between 1942 to 1944. He was eight years old when he and other boys, dressed in their Sunday special outfits of swallow-tail coats with a white choker collar, formed a guard of honour for Mr Thompson before a wonderful tea was served.

"He had a shop in College Street," Mr Elsegood recalled. "He gave us all a fork and said, 'there's a barrel of dried peas. I'll give you a shilling for every one you spike'.

"Nobody got anything because you couldn't do it."

That was a happy memory from an otherwise quite miserable time. Mr Elsegood, 69, believes some of the older boys enjoyed their time at Blue Coat School - named after the long blue coats worn by pupils at Christ's Hospital School in London.

But for him, it was the stuff of nightmares.

Eight years ago, Mr Elsegood, who lives in Osbaldwick, wrote an account of his time as a Blue Coat boy, encouraged by another former pupil and ex-Lord Mayor Jack Birch.

It reveals a school regime of violence, intimidation and military-style discipline. His initiation was a taste of what was to come.

"On my first night I woke up covered in blood. When I chummed up with a pal after a few days I asked why I was covered in blood and he said it was because I was snoring.

"He told me to stay awake that night and see what happened to snorers - 'they will either punch you in the face or pour the contents of the jerry over you to wake you'."

Daybreak did not bring much to look forward to.

"Breakfast was always 1 slices of bread with a spoonful of jam or marmalade, followed by porridge and a mug of tea," he wrote.

"The so-called porridge was a mass of lumps followed by one spoonful of actual proper mix.

"I remember on one occasion my brother being asked why he wasn't eating by Mr Amos Cecil Amos, the headteacher.

"My brother said, 'I'm sorry sir, I can't eat this, we're not used to it like this, all lumpy.'

"With this Mr Amos hit my brother so hard across the face his fingermarks were left on his face, and then he sat down and ate my brother's breakfast, saying 'nothing more for this boy today from any of you', meaning the kitchen staff."

Serious bullying was rife. "The big lads used to take the electric covers off the switches and push you on to them or force you to get an electric shock and no one left until you got one.

"Also they had a long plank about 14ft in the air, halfway out of a window. Below this was straw from the stables and they would make you walk this plank, prodding at your rear with a pitchfork until you fell off.

"Any grumbling, crying or complaints and you would be forced to do it over and over."

The communal bath, measuring about 12ft by 10ft, was filled with water which came up to the chest of the younger pupils.

Mr Elsegood wrote: "The prefects forced us little ones to 'monkey climb' across the pipe going over the bath. But when you got about half way you would be hit on the fingers with a sweeping brush to make you fall in and many a time someone nearly drowned."

The teachers had their own ways of making the boys comply.

"Mr Wallbank used to hit you on the side of your head with his knuckles if he saw you fighting or even in a slight dispute.

"Mr Martlew was Scottish and would come in full regalia - the dirk (knife) would be thrown to attract your attention - not at you but somewhere very near to make you sit up."

There were lighter moments. Every Friday night was a picture show, with Laurel and Hardy or something similar. "Then they would play it backwards for a finishing laugh."

Mr Elsegood recalls with gratitude the day the Mount School girls played host to the Blue Coat boys, with games and gifts: "a real treat for us".

But most days, with cockroaches in the kitchens and unchecked bullying by the prefects, were grim.

"We treated a day at the dentist, in Bootham, as a day out," writes Mr Elsegood.

"Extraction, filling or whatever, who cared, you were away from school one day."

Those days are long gone, but he will never forget them. Prompted by a letter in the Evening Press, Mr Elsegood was recently reunited with six boys from the school whom he hadn't seen for 60 years.

Four of them were the Todd brothers. He had to ask them their first names because at school they were only ever known as Todd 1, Todd 2, Todd 3 and Todd 4.

Now Mr Elsegood wants to organise a larger scale reunion.

Anyone who would like to take part can contact him on (01904) 410346.

Updated: 10:01 Monday, March 15, 2004